LONG LIVE | steven conklin

03

The sound of London Boy by Taylor Swift filled my room as I grabbed the clothes Millie threw at me and folded them into my suitcase. It had been one week since we graduated and one week since Steven's party where he yelled at me. I didn't cry anymore over the conversation and all my anger over it was gone. Me and Steven would never see each other again and we had spent the past four years hating each other's guts. Who cared about anything he said? Not me!

"How am I gonna survive without you?" Millie examined a white tank top and hung it back in my closet with a face. "You won't even think of me. You'll be in Paris taking gorgeous pictures, looking gorgeous, and wearing baguettes."

"Eating baguettes and wearing berets." She corrected. Millie is white with French grandparents so every summer, she goes to visit them. Usually, I sit at home watching her stories and being envious but this summer I'm going to visit my grandma at the beach. We had gone a few summers ago but mom hates the beach so we usually save our grandma visits for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But mom has forbidden me from going to beach week and we can't afford for me to have a grad party, so this is her attempt to make it up to me. I didn't have the heart to tell her sitting at home with my grandma and mom wasn't the perfect summer vacation. 

"Oui, oui, madmossile. Oh!" I grabbed my phone and added Be Our Guest to the queue. As the song started Millie turned to me and held out a hand.

"Ma chere Mademoiselle, it is with deepest pride and greatest pleasure that we welcome you tonight." Millie's accent was perfect on the French words. "And now we invite you to relax, let us pull up a chair as the dining room proudly presents -your dinner!" I took Millie's hands and she positioned us for a waltz. "Be. Our. Guest." The song sang and Millie and I took off dancing around my room, basically galloping. We almost tripped over each other and the clothes from my packing about six times before the song went off and a new song started.

Millie let go of my hands and leveled me with a serious look. "Please, try to have fun this summer. Go to the beach or something."

"I do go to the beach."

"Go to the beach and get in the ocean, not read." I rolled my eyes as if Millie was crazy despite having three books packed away in my suitcase. I had done it before she got here so she wouldn't see but Millie knew me too well. "I will make no promises."

Millie rolled her eyes and let out an exaggerated groan.

My mom came running into my room like a chicken with its head cut off. She looked around my room before looking at me like she was going to strangle me. "Jude!" She yelled, in her terrifying angry black mom voice. "Why are you not packed? We need to leave in thirty minutes." My eyebrows shot up and I turned to Millie. "We need to expedite this."

✦

We left an hour later. Not because of me but because my mom forgot to pack a million different things.

The ride to Cousins Beach was filled with Micheal Jackson, talks of Columbia, Beyoncé, my mom asking "whatchu know about this?" whenever an old school song came on, and Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam.

After way too long of that, we finally made it to my Grandma's beach house. To me, it was a beach house but to my grandma, it was home. When mom put the car in park, I hopped out before she could even turn the engine off. I stretched my hands to the sky as my mom climbed out of the car.

"Judith!" My grandma came running towards me. It was the middle of the day but her hair was still in a wrap and she wore pajamas. She pulled me into a tight hug. I hadn't seen her since Thanksgiving. "My college graduate!"

"Hi, mom." My mom said in a tone that said, "I'm here too". My grandma waved a hand at her daughter. "You've had your time." I laughed.

Despite her words, my grandma left me and pulled my mom into a hug, rocking the two of them from side to side. "How are you?"

"Fine, ma." Grandma pulled away. "Come, let me show you what I did to your room." She said to me. Even though I rarely visited, I had my own room in the back corner. It was always untouched, left exactly the way I had left it before but I guess this year my grandma wanted a change. "Let us bring our stuff in first." My mom said.

I reached into the unlocked car and grabbed my main bookbag. I headed into the house while my mom and grandma caught up. 

The living room of the house had been completely remodeled. It had a fireplace now and new wood floors. There was also new leather furniture instead of the previous cloth. Grandma's house was huge. She and my grandfather bought it a little after they got married. When he died, everyone expected her to sell it but she kept it and remodeled it every summer.

I pushed open the door to my room and saw it completely the same except for the fact my window had been turned into a bay window, complete with a bench to sit on. It faced the ocean, a perfect reading spot.

I threw my bag on my bed and ran out the door and down the stairs. I made it to the banister that opened to the front door where my grandma and mom were standing. My grandma smiled. "Thank you, Nana!"

"You're welcome, Judith. Maybe now you'll listen to me and stop going out to the beach at night to read." I climbed down the three remaining steps and pulled my grandma into a hug. "Thank you!"

I thought of my amazing bay window and Millie's words to me. Maybe this summer in Cousins wouldn't be all bad.